Monday, May 16, 2011

e.l.f. Mineral Eyeshadow - Review

After spending the better part of the afternoon making vain attempts to purchase anything from the NYX anniversary sale, I finally gave up and decided to review and swatch my e.l.f. mineral shadows instead. I have a bunch of these - e.l.f. had a "buy X amount of stuff, get 10 mineral shadows free" deal a while back - so I figured I'd review them in one post, and then swatch them in the next two posts, for the sake of my sanity.

Golden is the color that I've used the most, so this review is mostly based on that particular shade, although the others all seem to perform similarly. (And if anyone is curious, I like to apply it wet all over my lid, then blend out the edges with a matte black and smudge a little black into the outer corner and lashline - you get a gorgeous gold smokey eye!)

I love the packaging on these - the matte black lid is definitely reminiscent of MAC or bare minerals products, and it looks very sleek and professional. It's definitely much better quality than the packaging of the essentials line, which is to be expected but still nice. These can be used dry or wet, but I tend to use them wet and just pat a little dry powder on top to set them and help blend them out. The pigmentation is very nice, and you can get tons of color without having to use tons of product. I also like how the shadow looks different whether you use it wet or dry - it doesn't just get slightly more intense, it goes from frosty when dry to totally metallic when wet.

The one big problem I had with these shadows was the fallout. Even when I was just applying it to my arm to swatch it, I had bits of eyeshadow everywhere. I know that fallout is to be expected with a loose shadow, but there seemed to be a lot more of it. That's not a reason not to pick up a few shades of this shadow, though, considering all of its other strong points and the fact that it goes for a mere $3 on the e.l.f. website. This one definitely impressed me!